Black Amour

As the devastation from Japan's near-apocalyptic disaster continued to grow, yesterday's media was filled with reports that the future of America's move to greater use of nuclear power was gravely threatened. But that was yesterday, and yesterday's gone. Today, a new dawn and a new round of Sunday talk shows proved the indominatability of the American spirit.   There was, of course, a certain amount of caution. On 'Face the Nation', Senator Joe Lieberman said that the US needed to 'quietly'  put the breaks on nuclear development "until we can absorb what has happened in Japan as a result of the earthquake and the tsunami". But then, after we finish absorbing, "I don’t want to stop the building of nuclear power plants. It's domestic, it's clean when nothing goes wrong, and it's ours. And when I say it's ours, I mean that it's mainly owned by people like John Rowe and the Koch brothers, who are Americans last time I checked."   Massachusetts congressman Ed Markey agreed with Lieberman, all but conceding that we shouldn't build any more nuclear plants in seismically active areas until a safety review is completed. "I don't know about tsunami prone areas," conceded Markey, "but even if you took both areas off the table, that still leaves a whole lot of good places to build. Like Massachusetts."   Senate Minority Mitch stood firm in his support for the nuclear industry. "I don't think right after a major environmental catastrophe is a very good time to be making American domestic policy," he told FOX News Sunday. "I called my friend John Rowe at Exelon and he agreed thoroughly. The Obama administration is always eager to use any catastrophe to impose new business-strangling regulations, and I am going to use this opportunity to denounce him preemptively."   "The United States needs to work to free itself of dependence on foreign oil," Senator Chuck Schumer told 'Meet the Press', adding that he was "still willing to look at nuclear power. Look at it? That's putting it a little too lightly. I'm willing to gaze at it longingly. Nuclear power is like a dark and dangerous seductress, you've got to approach her safely, carefully, but you want her so much that it's hard to resist. It's black amour."

dominance lost

According to a shocking new report from the International Energy Agency, the United States is no longer the world's biggest energy consumer, losing the title to China after more than a century of dominance. China jumped to an impressive lead after upping consumption to 2252 million tons of oil equivalents annually, while the U.S. was barely treading water with 2170 million tons. The Obama administration tried to put a calm face on the startling news, with White House spokesman Robert Gibbs pointing out that the U.S. is still number one in oil consumption, while China is "using primarily coal. Dirty grimy coal. Which is mined by children. And sometimes the mines cave in on them." The Republicans, however, were not buying into the bravado. "Energy efficiency and conservation, that's what this president says he wants," grim-faced House Minority Leader Boehner told FOX News. "What I think is really on the Obama agenda is an end to American exceptionalism. My God, this is a record that stretches back to the early 1900s, a record that even Jimmy Carter was unable to diminish." "Another demoralizing uncomplishment by the Obama regime," tweeted renowned energy policy expert Sarah Palin. "#2 and not trying harder, are ya?" However the politics of this story plays out, there is enough blame to be shared by both parties. The decline is seen as part of a sad legacy which began during the Bush years, when in 2007 China overtook the U.S. as the leading producer of carbon dioxide and other emissions.